They headed north for several miles until they reached their camp in the woods along Broken Leg Creek, a favored spot with plenty of cover, water, and deadwood for cookfires. Here they found the supplies and riding whistlers they had left in reserve, and men set to the tasks of tending their wounds and caring for their beasts. Storm Arriving was inspecting his whistler’s feet for injury when a group of soldiers came up to him. Mosquito was with them. Storm Arriving glanced over at Whistling Elk, but the man-becoming-woman merely shrugged, not knowing what the men might want. Storm Arriving stood to meet them.
“It is time for us to go home,” Mosquito said.
Storm Arriving looked at the group. Ten men, all seasoned veterans, a tenth of his remaining strength. “How am I to wage this war without men to fight it?” he asked.
“That cannot be our concern,” Mosquito replied. “We cannot fight forever. We have to return to the People.”
“No,” Storm Arriving said. “You will stay here and fight. As you agreed.”
“We did not agree to fight all year,” Mosquito said, anger making his face darken with blood. “No one expected to fight all year!”
“Sharp Knife will return soon with the Crow People. Already the Crow soldiers will outnumber our own. Do you want to let the Crow defend our lands?”
Mosquito’s features twisted in distaste. “Fighting with the Crow? We should be fighting against them! If such trash is truly coming to the fight, it is only another reason to return home. And if you still believe that they will honor their agreement, you are a bigger fool than I thought.”
“Fool?” Storm Arriving said, stepping forward in anger. “Better fool than coward.”
“Is it a coward who wants to feed his family?”
“A coward runs home to his wife when the fighting gets tough.”
“At least I know where my wife is, and with whom.”
Whistling Elk stepped in between the men before they clashed. One hand against each man’s chest, he pressured them apart. Storm Arriving glared at Mosquito. He wanted to pummel the man’s blunt features, wanted to throttle him until his eyes boggled in his head.
“Stand back, both of you,” Whistling Elk said, and to Storm Arriving alone, “Fighting the men you lead will not help.”
The words sunk in and Storm Arriving swallowed his anger. He stepped back away from Whistling Elk’s barring hand. Mosquito did likewise.
“You cannot tell me what to do,” Mosquito said, uttering the ultimate phrase of the People’s independent spirit.
“No,” Storm Arriving said. “I can only tell you what you agreed to do. What you all agreed to do.”
Glancing from Storm Arriving to Whistling Elk, Mosquito decided not to respond. He turned and stalked off toward his mount and supplies. The men with him, some sheepish in rebuke, others still fuming with their own anger, followed him.
“Some will stay,” Storm Arriving said to Whistling Elk.
“Yes,” the man-becoming-woman said. “But how many? And for how long?”
He watched as seven soldiers packed up their gear and rode off toward the north.
“Sharp Knife will return soon with reinforcements,” he said.
I hope, he added to himself.
Toward evening, riders came in from the other battle groups in the region, bringing reports of heavy bluecoat activity, word of the Council’s continued refusal to send any soldiers, and news of departure of more men heading home to family, lodge, and the summer hunt. Storm Arriving sat near the small fire he shared with Whistling Elk and Knee Prints by the Bank. The lean carcasses of two rabbits hissed over the searing coals. Looking past the fire into the darkness of the wood beyond, he considered the information the riders had brought.
“The bluecoats are out in greater numbers,” he said.
“Like today,” Whistling Elk said. “That was not a simple supply train.”
“No,” Knee Prints by the Bank said. “Nor was it a group of new recruits. Those were seasoned men.”
This information pointed Storm Arriving toward an uncomfortable conclusion that he had been avoiding since sundown, but now he had to face it.
“They have changed strategies,” he said. “The bluecoats no longer merely protect their own settlements and harry us with small raiding parties. Now they send large forces marching across our lands. Now they hunt us.”
Whistling Elk held the sleeve of his dress out of the fire as he reached out to turn the rabbits on the spit. “Look at it this way. With fewer numbers, we will be harder to find.”
Storm Arriving sighed, his concerns deeper than his friend’s humor could effect. “Not us,” he said. “The People. They hunt the People.” He looked and saw the stunned faces of the two men he had come to trust above all others in this war. He shrugged and stared back into the darkness. “It is the only thing that makes sense.”
Knee Prints by the Bank scowled. “It is as it was for my people,” he said. “What the vé’hó’e cannot subdue, they work to rub out entirely.”
“How will we stop them?” Whistling Elk asked.
Storm Arriving lifted his head and looked once more into the forest darkness that hid his battle group. Small fires like his own were tended by tired soldiers, filling the wood with globes of wavering light encased in glimmering green, but there were too few—desperately too few to make a difference against a full regiment of bluecoats. He needed more men, and he closed his eyes to do what he had not done for a long time.
Sitting up straight, he felt the pull of skin on the scars he bore on his chest, the scars he earned through the skin sacrifice, a day-long ordeal spent hanging from skewers that pierced his flesh. He felt the tightness of the scars and remembered, after it was over and the stretched skin had been sliced away, the feeling that had suffused him. He had felt the nearness of the spirit world in that moment, and had been sure of its existence. Though his belief in it had waned, he reached back into that time and that moment, and sent a prayer onward into that other world: Help us.
His whistler rumbled from his spot nearby the fire, a low, chest-filling pulsation like fingers on a drumhead. Whistling Elk’s mount picked up the reverberating call, as did others. The hackles on Storm Arriving’s neck stood tall as he understood that the whistlers’ thrum was not a warning, but a message of homecoming.
He stood. Others did, also. Men and whistlers looked to the northwest, toward the wind and home. Past the radiant spheres of campfires, the forest was black. But the whistlers sensed that out there, someone was coming, some of their own were coming in.
The call of welcome growled through the trees and then, pale as spirit riders, men on whistlers appeared between the boles. Storm Arriving felt his heart leap in his chest as he saw their clothing, their headgear, their weapons, and their faces.
Crow.
From amid the ghostly company, Sharp Knife rode forward. Storm Arriving raised his hand and the Little Bowstring soldier came ahead to meet him. The Crow warriors stayed at the limit of vision. Sharp Knife dismounted and clasped hands with his friends.
“I am glad to see you,” Storm Arriving said. “We are in great need of what you bring.”
“It is a relief to be back among my own,” the veteran warrior said in a wistful tone, “but I am afraid I have not brought you what you wanted.”
“What?” Storm Arriving said with a laugh and a sweep of his hand toward the Crow. “Are these riders only spirit men?”
“No, they are real.”
“Then what is it I wanted that you have not brought?” Storm Arriving asked with a jovial slap to Sharp Knife’s shoulder.
“Enough of them,” Sharp Knife said.
Storm Arriving’s laughter died in a throat gone dry. Sharp Knife’s scowl of concern had not faded. Storm Arriving looked at the firelight’s limit and the ragged line of riders that stood along it. They were fierce-eyed men, some young, some mature, but none of them green, none of them inexperienced in war. They were just the type of men Storm Arriving ha
d hoped for, but Sharp Knife’s worry dug a pit in his belly.
“Tell me what you mean,” he said.
Sharp Knife hesitated, looking back at the riders himself before he spoke. “That is all there is. They are all that came.”
Storm Arriving felt every muscle tighten. He swallowed with difficulty. “Then tell me there are those I cannot see behind them.”
The Little Bowstring soldier hung his head. “I cannot.”
Knee Prints by the Bank spoke in a hiss. “This is treachery. There are barely forty of them.”
“Grey Feather promised two men for every rifle we sent him,” Storm Arriving said, unable to keep his voice low. “What happened to Grey Feather’s promise?”
“Quiet,” Whistling Elk said, a hand on Storm Arriving’s arm. “Quiet, or you will lose even the few he has sent us.”
Storm Arriving looked and saw the defiance in the Crow. Their bitter expressions spoke of old pain and little caring.
“This was all Grey Feather could send right now. It’s the hunting season, and his soldiers had to put aside meat for their families. These men, they have no families.”
As they spoke, the news spread through the camp. Standing there, hearing Sharp Knife’s words, Storm Arriving also heard the words if indignation that began to rise from others.
“This is all they sent?”
“The Crow People have gone back on their word.”
“I have a family, too.”
Storm Arriving closed his eyes as the discontent rolled through the forest, swift as wind, destructive as wildfire.
“Welcome in our new friends,” he said to Sharp Knife. “Ask them to make camp among us. I would not have them feel that they were any different from our own.”
Sharp Knife signed his agreement and went to do as he was asked.
“How can you be so calm?” Knee Prints by the Bank asked in a whisper.
Storm Arriving took a deep breath and smelled the scents of woodsmoke, cooked meat, and wild onions. “What choice do I have?” he said.
He did not eat that night, waving away any offer of the spitted rabbit. Instead, he sat next to his whistler, on the dark side, away from the fire, leaning against his mount’s spice-scented skin. From this shadowy spot, he could look out over the forest camp, and could see and hear everything.
Sharp Knife had done as he had asked and set the Crow warriors in camps among their own. Keeping the tribes separate could have delayed the inevitable, but he wanted to force the situation and see the result as soon as possible. And so, as he sat against his drake’s warmth, he listened to the arguments, the insults, and the challenges that were tossed between the campfires. As the night deepened, he heard the imprecations, the complaints, and the justifications as those tired of their futile war built the strength they needed. Toward morning, he heard the grumbling of whistlers as they were prodded awaked, and as their soldiers, convinced of their own righteousness but not brave enough to face their commander, stole out of camp before dawn would show their faces.
When the sun rose, weaving its golden light in past the tree trunks, Storm Arriving stood on stiff legs and walked through the encampment.
Men were waking up, eyes bleary with too little sleep, their worried dreams giving way to worried thoughts. As he passed by, Storm Arriving signed a silent greeting. “Thank you for staying,” he said to the men of his own tribe, and, “Thank you for coming,” he said to the Crow soldiers. Of the men who had stayed, he saw widowers, orphans, and those who, like Knee Prints by the Bank, bore a hatred of the bluecoats that outweighed everything else. There was a resolve in their features that hardened them. Eyes dark and expressionless, mouths set in grim lines, skin tight across tight jaws; they were faces carved by pain and loss, and in the Crow men he saw the same.
They were a hundred men, forty Crow and sixty of the People’s soldiers. It was a small group, but a group dedicated to the purpose ahead. As he returned to the ashes of his own campfire, he knew there would be no further desertions. Those who were with them would stay with them until the end, whatever end that might be.
And what of me? he asked himself. Neither orphan nor widower, what keeps me here?
The answer, however, was clear. He was just like these men: hard, bitter, and alone, a man without family or connections. His mother and father were dead, his wife and child and sister were off seeking a white man, and his father-in-law stood in public opposition to his every move.
But I am a soldier, aren’t I? Isn’t it my duty to be out here, protecting my tribe?
He did not know but, as he looked out over the fighting men who would follow him beyond this place, he didn’t know that it really mattered, as long as the goal was the same.
Chapter 17
Moon When the Whistlers Get Fat, Waxing
Fifty-seven Years after the Star Fell
Off the Coast of Cadiz
Land of the Iron Shirts
Speaks While Leaving stood on the ship’s deck with—and apart from—the other passengers. The twenty or so vé’hó’e who had traveled with her on the Hija Del Viento had become accustomed to her presence, but they still did not know what to do about her. At first, their rudeness had exceeded anything she could have imagined. They gaped at her with stares as open as their mouths, their pallid features twisted in disgust. Within a few days, they began to hide their whispers behind their hands, their stares turned to long glances, and their retreats diminished to less evasive maneuvers.
The trip might have gone more smoothly had either One Who Flies or Alejandro been able to act as liaisons between her and the other passengers. A word, a gesture, even their mere presence might have lessened the horror of these people. But wishing and wondering did not change the fact that Alejandro had spent the entire voyage below deck, ill with the ship’s constant rocking, and that One Who Flies had been likewise incapacitated, though for a different reason entirely.
With Vincent’s help, One Who Flies had managed to gain access to the liquor that had debilitated him so thoroughly. But Vincent had remained behind in Cuba, and since then Mouse Road had taken in hand the care of One Who Flies. The ocean crossing had not been easy on him.
Not that Speaks While Leaving regretted the situation. Though her journey had been spent mostly in solitude, it had given her time to spend with her daughter without caring about the things that normally filled her life: preparing the next meal, fetching the day’s water, setting up the family’s lodges, butchering kills, tanning hides, drying meat, gathering wood and chips for the fire, making clothes, weaving ropes, and tending to the newborn, the aged, and those afflicted by the illnesses and accidents that were part of everyday existence on the plains.
The past moon had been a time of unbelievable luxury. Water was brought to her, food was presented, and even the eliminations of her own body were whisked away by others whose only purpose was to serve her and those with her. She hadn’t had to concern herself with anything but the care and feeding of her daughter, and even that had been tremendously eased by the continual supply of clean cloth, ample water, and foods prepared by unseen hands. And, had she desired it, even the most basic tasks of feeding and bathing her daughter could have been delegated to others.
But she had not so desired. The time had been an unexpected gift that she had no wish to waste. She watched Blue Shell Woman grow plump with the generous feedings. She was enchanted anew by her daughter’s silly babblings. Not needing to keep her hands free for daily work, she put aside the cradleboard and instead carried her daughter about, holding her on her hip as she showed Blue Shell Woman the world around them. She had learned of her daughter’s inquisitiveness, of how birds and the waving branches of trees always made her laugh. Aboard the ship, the two of them had fallen into a new rhythm; waking early to enjoy the dawn and the empty decks before the other passengers awoke, then eating something sweet and warm and creamy, then a nap in the sunshine. When gulls flew with the ship, she took Blue Shell Woman to the rear deck and they laughe
d as the big birds wheeled and spun, their snow-white plumage bright in the sunlight. In the afternoons, Speaks While Leaving told her daughter stories and tales, taught her of the spirits and the world. During the nights when the ship’s movement made it hard for them to sleep for longer than a hand’s breadth of time, she spoke at length of the girl’s father. Even though it was tender subject, her daughter had a right to be proud of her father, and in the darkened cabin room, she could tell her of his achievements and her tears would not show.
And through these languorous days, this yearling babe whom she thought she knew was revealed to her as a completely new person with her own moods, thoughts, likes, dislikes, and even—she thought—dreams.
She stood at the rail, Blue Shell Woman happy at her hip, both of them squinting into the morning brilliance that hid their destination. Nearby but discreetly distant were the vé’hó’e passengers: men in dark suits and women in frocks of striped cloth. Now and again, one of the women would glance in her direction, as if wondering what Speaks While Leaving might do next. Suddenly the woman gasped and stared at her. Others near the woman looked and they, too, stared at her and Blue Shell Woman. Then Speaks While Leaving heard someone behind her make a rude noise. She turned to find Mouse Road, up from belowdecks, her fingers pulling at her cheeks and at the corners of her eyes, her tongue wagging like a bull in rut and her rear end swaying from side to side.
Laughter burst from her lips even as she moved to hide her sister-in-law from view.
“Stop that,” she said, barely able to speak for laughing.
“Why?” Mouse Road asked, wiping her mouth with her sleeve and peering around to look at the vé’ho’e women. “I’m just giving them what they want, something to stare at.”
Speaks While Leaving laughed again. “Yes, you certainly did that,” she said, and wanted to change the subject. “How is One Who Flies?”
“See for yourself,” the younger woman said, turning.
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